Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Chirstmas @ the U-Club

I started off with a poem that described the evening I baked a Bundt cake on PBS, and how I went off script to announce to my granddaughter that I loved her more than anybody else.

Next I tried to solve the worlds problems by announcing that humans would never heal unless....

A FEMALE PRESIDENT WAS PLACED IN THE OVAL OFFICE

A POPE IS DECLARED FROM DUBLIN CITY

OR, LETTING M.P.R. GREET US EACH MORNING, WITH A POEM FROM ETHNA MCKIERNAN

And if that wasn't enough, I shared the account Executive Chef Joan Ida passed onto to me about how she went to Italy to research menus, and as she sat in her hotel room alone....a loud noise came from above. when she peeked through the curtains.....the Pope was riding shotgun, in a helicopter...and he waved at her.

These were three really good poems, however........this morning as Klecko put his ear to the ground, all the cool kids were talking about the piece he closed with.....

"TROPHIES OF CONQUEST"

Instead of describing it, let me just show it to you guys......

Knowing how I disliked Garrison Keillor

Without provocation

The pastry chef entered my office smirking

Because she had received

A secondhand invite to a gala

Taking place at the mans home

That very night

"Steal the bastard's salt and pepper shakers"

I demanded "We'll put them in the break room"

My request offered no purpose

Yet the pastry chef called it genius

Promising to fulfill my bidding

The following morning

During a postmortem of the party

The pastry chef rolled her eyes

While explaining how his cookbooks were shit

As she handed me a package

With contents I'm not at liberty to discuss

I get it.

People love it when you target a sacred cow, but I guess in my opinion......the target pales in comparison to the possible caper that may (or may not) have conspired between two low profile colleagues.

But anyway....the University Club was spectacular, decked out with Christmas lights, a million poinsettia plants and a fresh blanket of snow.

The only thing that could have improved our venue is if it came equipped with a seven pound Baby-Jesus.

As you look down, you will see Hertzel's take on the evening, however.....she really is modest in sparing you insight on her set, and how she "CRUSHED" her quilt story that may have put a tear or two into the eyes of even the most macho literary patrons.

The evenings roster was simply one literary monster after another. I must confess.....even Klecko was more nervous than he would care to admit.

But as Laurie sends props out to the boys in her account, I'd like to cast my vote of approval to the women. Although all of them were superb, I kinda felt Hertzel and Heid Erdrich were captivating. Maybe if some of the dudes would have talked less.....they might have talked longer.

I wouldn't have minded a bit.

Merry Christmas L.A.B. Rats -

I love most of you

Laurie Hertzel is
senior editor for books at the Star Tribune, where she has worked since
1996. She is the author of "News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental
Journalist," winner of a Minnesota Book Award.

Props, jokes and poetry

The women weren't exactly sedate, but they read from printed
scripts--poetry, book excerpts, essays--and they mostly kept to the time
limit. Within those constraints, though, there was much room for
laughter and poignancy, as Heid Erdrich read poems that she had "sneaked into" her new cookbook, "Original Local," and Mary Lou Judd Carpenter
read from a memoir she has written about her parents, "Miriam's Words:
The Personal Price of a Public Life." (Her father was congressman Walter
Judd, and the memoir draws heavily on the letters of his wife, Miriam.)
Eleanor Leonard read an essay about lighting the candles on a tree and singing "Silent Night."But the men! Whoa! Less reading than performance art, spoken word, with props.
Last night's Readings for Writers (holiday edition), coordinated and emceed, as usual, by St. Paul Poet Laureate Carol Connolly,
was unexpectedly raucous and, at times, side-splittingly funny. Not
what you might expect for a literary evening at the sedate and dignified
University Club.

Mike Finley pulls poems out of a sock

Poet Mike Finley, blue-eyed and
cherubic, pulled a tinsel-bedecked hat out of a bag, placed it solemnly
on his head, then pulled out a big gold Christmas stocking and began
fishing around inside of it, drawing out slips of paper at random and
reading them. Not poems, exactly, but more than jokes, they first
startled, then amused the audience. (The first one: "Why / is that
frisbee / getting bigger? / and then it hits me....")Poet and memoirist Ted King pulled
on a Santa hat, claimed that Ted King couldn't make it and had sent
Santa in his place, and then began spinning fantastic stories, seemingly
off the top of his head, about the original Santa giveaway (which
involved theft).
Baker-poet Danny Klecko
never opened his prop bag, just pounded it on the podium dramatically
as he read a poem about urging one of his pastry chefs to steal Garrison Keillor's
salt and pepper shakers. Was that what was in the bag? The last line of
the poem tells us that the contents "I'm not at liberty to discuss."
At 9 p.m., just as Tim Nolan,
the last poet of the evening, approached the podium, a dozen or so
people screamed, "Snow emergency!" and fled to move their cars. Nolan
looked wryly at Connolly and said, "You mention my name and people head
for the door."
He carried only a sheaf of paper with him, but it turned out that he,
too, had props: As he read his final poem, "Shoes," he removed his
shoes and placed them on the podium in front of him. He made it almost
all the way through the poem before stopping, sniffing the air, and
saying, "Oooh, my shoes stink." And then, "That's not part of the poem."
The annual event is free but passes the hat for Public Art St. Paul.

You shatter my belief that you were one of those "were the men are strong...". But, I guess I can live with an instigator, aider, abetter and fence of crime, too. Merry Christmas to you, einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr (a good slide into the New Year, as the Germans say) and keep the humor, good spirits and commonsense in your posts!